By that time, the Germans weren’t shooting at guys in the water because all the soldiers were either dead or on land. My father ambled out of the water onto land and found a bunch of GI’s huddled behind a huge rock. In the next few days, he said he fired his rifle a bunch of times but was pretty sure he never actually shot anyone.
And that’s how he survived the invasion of Normandy and lived to meet my mother and produce yours truly.
When I get into my usual habit of mentally retracing the steps of what led me to whatever fix I’m in, you’d think I’d go back to that. But I never do. I guess that’s Existentialism. Whatever. Another thing I can only take so far. I mean, I’m on the planet Earth because my father basically slept through the bloodiest battle of World War II. What the hell am I supposed to do with that?
At about 4:30 that afternoon, I was getting some paperwork out of the way. (Don’t get me started on insurance forms.) But, at the moment, I was happy to occupy my mind with busy work.
Midway through an explanation of why Blue Cross was only going to cover 60 percent of a bunion, Sylvia buzzed me. I assumed she was letting me know she was shoving off, but instead she said, “I have a Detective Shelby here to see you.”
I wasn’t overly worried because Shelby had been the good cop through everything, but my immediate thought was, “God, it never ends.”
I was even less worried when Shelby came in with a smile, holding a gift-wrapped box.
“Detective Shelby, how are you? I heard you were a bit under the weather.”
“No big deal. I get about ninety colds a year.” Shelby lowered his shoulders like: Enough small talk, and said, “Well, first, I wanted to thank you for what you did for Byron.”
He looked at me in kind of a friendly/conspiratorial way, and I guess my cop show instincts kicked in because I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Shelby laughed and said, “You’re a smart guy. I promise you, I’m not wired.”
I smiled and said, “I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He handed me the box. “Byron wanted to return something to you, and he wanted to give Charlie a gift for Hanukkah.”
“That’s very thoughtful.”
“Open it.”
The lid of the box was separately wrapped, so I pulled it off and saw the tube I’d given to Byron, cleaned and dry like a commercial for Cascade.
“What’s this?” I asked, knowing exactly what it was.
“I don’t know,” Shelby said grinning, “but it’s yours for you to do with however you wish.”
“Alright, sir.”
The other item in the box was a kid-sized, navy blue windbreaker, which I unfolded and turned around. On the back it said, NASSAU COUNTY SWAT.
“Oh, Charlie’s going to love this.”
“We usually save them for kids who’ve been crime victims or whatever. But Charlie seemed like such a great kid and you helped . . . Well, let’s leave it at Charlie being a great kid.”
“Thank you. Really, that’s very nice of you guys. And, not that it isn’t a pleasure to see you, Detective Shelby, but why didn’t Byron bring it himself?”
“He didn’t think you needed to see him again today.”
I nodded, trying to look as appreciative as possible.
“Byron’s not a bad guy. He’s gone a bit off track and . . . But hey, he’s my partner, you know?”
Again, I nodded, now trying to look as understanding as possible.
Finally, Shelby warmly wished me and my family a “merry Hanukkah,” shook my hand, said, “You’re a good man,” and left.
You know, I shouldn’t have even mentioned that he said “merry Hanukkah.” It bugs me that we’ll hear a thing like that and have a big laugh about the “dumb goyim.” Like I said before, Jews barely register on the chart of world population. How the hell should anyone know that we don’t do “merry?”
On the other hand, he is a cop in New York.
Jesus. I’m so sick of being someone who looks at both sides of a question.
Before I left the office, I called Danielle. We only talked for a few seconds because she was on her way to the ICU, but she didn’t sound so hot. Things must’ve been sinking in. I didn’t even ask Danielle what the doctors were saying. But, even with all of that weighing on her, she still wished me a happy Hanukkah and thanked me profusely for calling. I didn’t have the words lying around to tell her how unnecessary it was to thank me, but I did manage to stop myself from wishing her a happy Hanukkah. I guess she could’ve had a happy Hanukkah if you popped awake sometime during the holiday and said, “Wasn’t I just on the beach?” But from the sound of her voice, it didn’t seem likely.
I hung up and closed my eyes for a second, then looked at my watch and saw it was time go.
Sylvia wished me a happy holiday on my way out and, in an uncharacteristic display of human personality, she said, “Did you get any exciting gifts for your children?”
I told her I got ice hockey stuff for Charlie, and Sylvia said, “Oh,” in a way that made it seem like I’d gotten him a subscription to Penthouse.
“Not a hockey fan, Sylvia?”
“No, it’s . . . nothing.”
“What, Sylvia? You can tell me anything. I won’t be offended.”
“No, it’s just that ice skating is very dangerous. It’s easy to fall and the ice is very hard.”
Okay, folks. And now for our next guest on the “Thank God, She Doesn’t Have Kids” Show . . .
It was still raining when I drove home. On the satellite radio’s ’70s rock station, I caught some jazzy Steely Dan, a little campy Queen, and Bruce. I always thought it amazing that you were into Springsteen before anyone had even heard of him. I’ve never been ahead of the curve on anything. Well, maybe Prince. I liked him pretty early. Anyway, it was nice to drive in the slop singing along with Thunder Road.
But I remember when Alyse and I saw him in concert about two years earlier. He still sounded amazing, but, truth be told, Alyse and I both thought it was a little weird to hear this bazillionaire still singing about juvenile delinquents in New Jersey. I don’t know. I guess he’s got to make the fans happy with the oldies, but I couldn’t help thinking that, by now, the words must fly out of his mouth by pure muscle memory, the same as the gibberish Hebrew came out of my mouth at my Bar Mitzvah. Baruch atah adonai, you ain’t a beauty, but, hey, you’re alright. In a way, I found the whole thought comforting. Even Bruce Springsteen has this day-to-day existence with obligations that go on and on, year after year. Even with 20,000 people watching, chores are chores.
Alyse and I tried to get the kids into Bruce. We even thought about taking them to the concert, but the tickets were pricey for two, let alone another two for kids who’d probably pass out during Jungle Land. As it happened, halfway through, a lot of the audience looked like they were wondering why the hell they blew off their own bedtimes for Bruce. Fat couples in tented tour t-shirts, passing binoculars back and forth, writing down the set list, smoking joints, flicking on lighters for encores . . . oy. It was like updated Thomas Wolfe. You can’t go nubile again.
Agent Foreman was back on his shift in front of my house. As I had that morning, I was waved over to a Chevy by a federal agent. Foreman told me that Horton, twenty minutes earlier, had closed the bidding on Alyse’s website.
“So, he’s got all he needs?”
“Yes.”
“So, you don’t really have to monitor our home anymore?”
“No. But Horton wanted me to tell you to lock up your house as securely as possible, keep on a lot of lights, and keep his number close by.”
“I appreciate that. The fact is, I had a one-on-one meeting with Detective Byron today, and I feel confident that we settled things.”
Foreman looked at me a little cross-eyed. “How did you come to have a
one-on-one meeting with this guy?”
“I called him and told him to meet me in the garage of my office building.”
“Sir, with all due respect, that was an incredibly stupid thing to do.”
“Oh, I have no doubt of that. I can’t believe I did it myself. But it worked out. Seriously. He even sent over a gift for my kid.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, what did you say to him?”
It struck me as a bad idea to tell an FBI agent that I’d tipped off a rogue cop about an impending drug test.
“Well, if you don’t mind, Agent Foreman, I’ve got you on a strict need-to-know basis.”
That was the first time I saw Foreman crack a smile. As I said before, people in law enforcement just don’t know what the hell to make of civilians. In his amused confusion, Foreman said, “Have a happy Hanukkah, sir.”
He started up his car. Onto other criminals.
X.
You know, something just dawned on me. During the entire Tuesday I’ve been describing, four people wished me a happy Hanukkah and only one of them was Jewish. And she had converted.
I got home to my Jewish-by-birth family and Hanukkah commenced, albeit exclusively in Charlie’s room because the diarrhea left him too limp to get out of bed. Esme was atypically enthusiastic about her new boots, a new sweater with a penguin logo, and a new Edit Pro computer program so she could make her own movies that I’d be highly reluctant to see. Charlie was pretty thrilled about the hockey stuff until Esme said, “Chuckster, you’re going to be such a great player,” at which point Charlie was over the moon.
When Charlie opened the box from Byron, I said, “That’s a gift from the two nice detectives you met.” Charlie and Alyse looked quizzically at the jacket, and then at me. “They just enjoyed meeting you, Chuckster.” He didn’t need any help getting juiced over the NASSAU SWAT jacket. By April, he was wearing it every day. After I gave Alyse a tell-you-later look, she nodded and went downstairs to bring up a bushel of latkes.
We blow off the menorahs and dreidels and prayers, but we draw the line at latkes.
In no time, there we were, all sitting around Charlie in bed, sprinkling the latkes with sugar and dunking them in applesauce. A happy family. I assumed Esme didn’t have any blowback from the previous day’s classroom discussion of anti-Semitism because she was in great form that night. The fact that she was wolfing down latkes was enough to thrill me, since I’m endlessly worried about her winding up like one of those women you see in restaurants pretending to enjoy hummus.
Charlie wondered if his tropical fish would eat latkes, so I took a few crumbs and sprinkled them in the tank. The four of us peered in as all the angel fish took the crumbs in their mouths and immediately spit them out; the school of neon tetras batted the crumbs between them like a hyper-kinetic soccer game. When the crumbs landed on the teal blue gravel, the albino catfish came over and hovered over their Hanukkah meal, tasting it, spitting it out, smelling it, tasting it again. Esme put herself in the head of the catfish saying, “These latkes smell good, but I don’t like them. Why don’t I like latkes? I know I’m not a kosher fish because I eat crap off the bottom of the house, but still, there’s no reason I shouldn’t enjoy some latkes. They smell good and they’re chewy, but I just don’t like latkes. Look at all those people outside the tank: they like latkes. So, what’s wrong with me? Why, God? Why? Why do I keep spitting out these latkes?”
Charlie was laughing so hard I was pretty sure he was going to get sick again, but we were all laughing too hard to stop him. Esme was like our own little—Who’s that short comedian who shouts with his eyes closed? He’s on Howard Stern all the time? I can’t remember his name, but you know who I’m talking about. Esme was like the female pre-teen version of that guy. Only she ad-libbed the whole thing!
I guess I can hype the wonders of my kids as much as everyone else. But just because I do it doesn’t mean I can’t hate it when other people do it.
Anyway, that was, at least for the time being, the best Hanukkah we ever had. Just the four of us sitting together in Charlie’s snug little room, laughing and eating and opening gifts. I mean, when you think about it, is that really a somehow less holy observance of the holiday than anyone else’s? How exactly is lighting candles while saying a prayer a more religious experience than watching tropical fish eat latkes? I know that sounds funny, but I really mean it. I honestly think Esme’s doing her catfish/latke routine was as meaningful or even more meaningful to my kids than if they were rocking back and forth at the Wailing Wall asking God to bless our home. Those laughs blessed our home more palpably and creatively than God ever did.
There. I said it.
You know, I think that’s the first time I used the word “palpably” in a conversation. I remember from high school, some guy in a Shakespeare play said it. “A hit. A palpable hit.”
Whatever. Another word now mine forever.
“I think I heard the doorbell.”
Charlie, in his perpetual vigilance, sat up in bed. We all went quiet and heard nothing for maybe fifteen seconds.
Finally, Alyse said, “I just heard the bell, too.”
We don’t get many solicitors in our neighborhood, and being targeted by one was even more unlikely on Hanukkah. Of course, someone just popping over without calling—well, a law against that could be another policy you could ride to the White House.
Alyse and I went downstairs.
In one of the rare times when I’ve felt called upon to play the male role in our relationship, I strode ahead of Alyse and intoned, “Who’s there?”
A familiar voice answered and Alyse looked at me like: What the shit?
XI.
I opened the door and there was Audra. She held the metal end of a closed, black umbrella on the floor under the roof of our porch. Despite the umbrella, she looked smaller and more washed out than I ever remembered seeing her. But that might have had something to do with the fact that just behind her stood a hulking six-foot-five black man with long dreadlocks, dark sunglasses, and, hanging around his neck, a cross big enough to anchor a Carnival Cruise ship.
It’s amazing how quickly long-cultivated open-mindedness can scurry away for old-school racist bullshit. My instant read was that Audra was a hostage, her body screening my view of the gun being held to her back.
If only I didn’t give a shit about being warm and comforting to my patients, I’d have never made any impression on Audra, and she wouldn’t be here with Cinque from the Symbionese Liberation Army.
I looked out at the street knowing the FBI cars were gone.
“I’m so sorry to disturb you,” Audra said. “This is Winnie.”
Alyse, Audra, and I all tilted our white heads up toward Winnie.
“How do you do?” Winnie said with a warm Caribbean lilt in his voice.
He removed his glasses and extended his hand. I shook it, already embarrassed and in the throes of one of my worst self-inflicted guilt-trips by my initial racist reaction to him. Maybe it would be best if you don’t tell Danielle this story. I don’t want her to think I’m some kind of closet John Bircher.
Regaining my head at last, I blurted out, “Audra, how did you know where I live?”
Alyse gave me a look: Why would you ask that?
“The petition my father brought here. It had your address.”
To stop me from blurting out something really off-the-wall, Alyse stepped forward and asked, “Audra, are you alright?”
“My father’s in the hospital.”
Tears leaked down Audra’s cheeks. I had a thought that I’d now seen the full gamut of this woman’s emotions.
Alyse—God bless her—didn’t go right to, “Then why the fuck are you here and not at the hospital?” No, Alyse put her hand on Audra’s shoulder and said, “Is it serious?”
Audra coughed out, “I don’t know. It�
�s his heart.”
Alyse and I glanced at each other. Winnie quietly added, “Audra believes she caused her father’s heart ailment.”
“It is my fault. That’s why I didn’t go to the hospital. I was scared he wouldn’t want me there and I’d make things worse. I didn’t know what to do, and you’re the only normal people I know around here to ask.”
Kind of a nice compliment, don’t you think, Commie?
Alyse calmly said, “Then you did the right thing.”
Alyse being so magnanimous left me both blown away with admiration and mildly insulted. Any other wife would have taken the whole thing to mean there must be something more going on between her husband and his hot little patient. I guess being oppressively reliable is both a blessing and a curse.
Alyse ushered Audra and Winnie off the porch and into the foyer. I softly closed the door, not wanting the kids to hear.
Alyse took Audra’s umbrella and put it in a two-foot high glass—I don’t know. Jug?—that was painted with pictures of toppling skyscrapers by one of Alyse’s artists about an hour after 9/11 happened. It was a gift.
Audra stood around waiting for the next directive from Alyse when I said, “Audra, no matter what you did, your father loves you. It can only help him if you’re with him at the hospital.”
Audra looked at Alyse for confirmation. After my how-did-you-know-our-address? line, I could hardly blame her for seeing Alyse as the coherent thinker of our household. Alyse nodded her solemn agreement, before saying, “Audra, did you walk here?”
“Yes.”
Alyse turned to me: “Honey, you should drive her to the hospital.”
It Won't Always Be This Great Page 30